Tea Party Cheers For American Credit Downgrade

[cman]

What a terrible day for America!


http://progressivetoo.com/2011/08/08/video-tea-party-cheers-for-downgrade/

[baltoro]

In yesterday's Los Angeles Times was an interesting quote from a U.S. Senator in this article: U.S. Credit Downgrade Unlikely To Fix Logjam in Congress:   

I find it interesting to see S&P so vigilant now in downgrading the U.S. credit rating,...Where were they four years ago when they and other credit rating agencies helped cause this horrendous recession by providing AAA ratings to worthless subprime mortgage securities on behalf of Wall Street investment firms?"

From the recent posts I've read on the subject, I think we can ALL AGREE ON THIS:
The Tea Party members and their affiliates are INSANE,... :eek

[clive]

It's the insane wing-nuts on both ends of the spectrum that are the problem, and that polarize the debate. Perhaps putting the interests of the country ahead of vested interests would be a good place to start.

Perhaps Col. Sanders would prefer they stay asleep at the wheel and not learn from history, or perhaps he forgets where the pressure to give everyone a loan came from.

Perhaps we should interpret the S&P downgrade as Paul Revere shouting the "Chinese are coming..", and they want their money back.

[asmGhost]

So....exactly what is insane about demanding fiscal responsibility from politicians and a reduction in the national debt?

[clive]

The politicians don't want to take any responsibility, perhaps if they had to live under the same rules as everyone else they might be better focused, whether it's their own taxes, health care, or pension, they have their own rules and benefits. So much for "of the people, by the people, for the people'

[baltoro]

So....exactly what is insane about demanding fiscal responsibility from politicians and a reduction in the national debt?

Excellent. I was being facetious in my above comment. And, there is nothing insane about demanding fiscal responsibility from politicians and a reduction in the national debt. It might have been the sane thing to do thirty years ago,...instead of waiting until the problem was nearly catastrophic. The annual deficits incurred during the George W. Bush administration as a result of two decade long wars were so fiscally irresponsible that it defies imagination,...

[GregL]

What's insane is how they insisted we do it and that we do it right now when the economy is in such bad shape.  Anyone who knows anything about economics will tell you that spending cuts are exactly what we don't need with the economy the way it is.  We should be eliminating tax cuts for the super-rich and for corporations, cutting military spending and most of all we should be raising some revenues.  The Republicans and the Tea Party have said their first priority is to see President Obama fail, unfortunately they are bringing the whole country down in the process.

[baltoro]

We should be eliminating tax cuts for the super-rich and for corporations and cutting military spending and most of all we should be raising revenues.

Exactly. That's a pretty sensible approach,...and, fairly obvious, too. You'd think that our well-educated legislators would see it the same way.

[MichaelW]

I would be careful about open-ended statements that we need to raise revenues. Keep in mind that unlike the wealthy and the corporations the middle-class taxpayers have no way to bite back.

[clive]

the middle-class taxpayers have no way to bite back.

They can remove their money from the system and sit on it. It's not as if the banks are paying any interest, and the stock market is going backward. You have inflation, you could hedge that with metals, I guess. Take it in old quarters. It would have more impact than you think.

The stock market will probably be back shortly once we get used to the new normal, it's not as if anything in the US economy has fundamentally changed in the last week. The people cheering right now are those hawking gold and silver.

[hutch--]

There are a couple of ways to reduce the debt for the US, get out of the two disasterous wars that are bleeding the country dry and use the US military for what it was originally intended, to defend the US from attack. Much lower cost, much more effective and comfortably within the US capacity to maintain economically. The second is to rein in the Federal Reserve and not use US taxpayers money, life savings, pensions and welfare entitlements to bail out the banks thatcontrol the Federal Reserve.

Until the US takes control of its own currency again it will always be at the mercy of the same banks and bankers that PHUKED over the US in late 2007.

[hutch--]

Actually Clive's comment is close to the truth here, a vast number of people I know have their money sitting in cash as it will not collapse overnight. Those brave enough to still keep investing in the market are staying very close to the door so they can get their money out fast and most have learnt that with an artificially fluctuating market, the ups con the suckers and the down fleece them so you just keep fiddling the market up and down and you make money out of it. Now pull the money out into cash and they (big banks etc ...) have nothing like the leverage on your assetts.

In OZ the general trend is to personally reduce debt and save your money at the moment, it is stuffing the retailers big time but many of the greedy bastards deserve it after years of price gouging their customer base. Manipulating money does nothing for an economy, it just sucks more money out of it and interferes with its function by restricting the flow of working capital. For the US specifically the founding fathers had a very good grasp of these problem and constructed the US constitution to protect Americans from these abuses, it took 200 years but shitty politicians found enough ways to bypass the constitutional protections and rip the whole country off.

[Bill Cravener]

Perhaps Col. Sanders would prefer they stay asleep at the wheel and not learn from history, or perhaps he forgets where the pressure to give everyone a loan came from.

There you go again clive, foot in mouth disease? And again the first one to hop off the turnip truck. :tdown

[Bill Cravener]

I watched the Democrats bend over backwards to try and reach a deal with the tea bagger backed Republican controlled house even offering to put deep cuts to our entitlements, those things we seniors have paid into over our lifetimes, on the table in return for very modest tax increases on the ultra rich. The tea bagger hostage takers would have nothing to do with any such thing as compromise. They want Republican politicians to cut life long earned entitlements yet absolutely zero revenue increases for the wealthiest of us. How can they claim they are serious about deficit and debt reduction when they refused to agreed to a reasonable compromise? No, they were ready to undermine the good name and credit of the United States to further their Republican ideological agenda. Well, they succeeded. I am absolutely convinced that the market drop and the S&P downgrade is a sign that investors are worried about the fanatical suicide bombers in the Republican tea bagger controlled house who have resorted to blackmail to get their way.

[clive]

There you go again clive, foot in mouth disease? And again the first one to hop off the turnip truck.

Yeah, keep pounding with the mean spirited vitriol, you know it feels good.